Language neutral syntactic representation of text

Abstract

A data structure represents a textual string. The data structure is in the form of an annotated tree that includes nodes, each node having at most one parent node and a set of unordered, immediate constituents, each immediate constituent of a node being identified by a semantic relation to the node.

What is claimed is:  
     
         1 . A data structure representing a surface textual string of words, for use in providing inputs to applications, the data structure comprising: 
 an annotated tree including nodes, each having at most one parent node, the nodes comprising terminal nodes and non-terminal nodes, the non-terminal nodes representing a constituent, and a branch connecting a node to a parent thereof, each branch being labeled with a label indicative of a semantic relation between the connected nodes.    
     
     
         2 . The data structure of  claim 1  wherein the terminal nodes correspond to lemmas of the words in the textual string.  
     
     
         3 . The data structure of  claim 1  wherein the non-terminal nodes are structured to represent constituents corresponding to a plurality of the words in the textual string.  
     
     
         4 . The data structure of  claim 1  wherein the labels establish a dominance relation among the nodes.  
     
     
         5 . The data structure of  claim 1  wherein the nodes are annotated with features, the features being indicative of linguistic characteristics of the corresponding node.  
     
     
         6 . The data structure of  claim 1  and further comprising: 
 a non-tree attribute that is indicative of a non-local dependency between a node to which the non-tree attribute is connected and at least one other node. [rgc8]   
 
     
     
         7 . The data structure of  claim 1  wherein the branches are unordered.  
     
     
         8 . The data structure of  claim 1  wherein the words in the textual string include function words and wherein the tree structure further comprises: 
 features representative of at least a subset of the function words.  
 
     
     
         9 . The data structure of  claim 5  wherein the annotated nodes are structured to represent abstract expressions that are implicit in the surface textual string.  
     
     
         10 . The data structure of  claim 3  wherein the non-terminal nodes represent constituents to indicate modifier scope.  
     
     
         11 . A computer readable medium storing a data structure for use in generating an input, representative of a textual input string of words, to an application, the data structure comprising: 
 a tree structure comprising: 
 a plurality of unordered branches connecting nodes, the nodes including at least one non-terminal node and at least one terminal node, the non-terminal nodes representing constituents in the textual input string, and each branch including a label indicative of a semantic relationship between nodes connected by the branch.  
   
     
     
         12 . The computer readable medium of  claim 11  wherein terminal nodes in the tree structure comprise lemmas of the words in the textual input string.  
     
     
         13 . The computer readable medium of  claim 11  wherein the constituents include high order constituents that each correspond to a plurality of the words in the textual input string.  
     
     
         14 . The computer readable medium of  claim 11  wherein nodes in the tree structure are annotated with features that are indicative of linguistic characteristics of the nodes.  
     
     
         15 . The computer readable medium of  claim 1  wherein the branches that connect non-terminal nodes to one another are labeled to indicate a semantic relation between constituents.  
     
     
         16 . The computer readable medium of  claim 11  and further comprising: 
 an attribute indicative of non-local dependencies between a corresponding node to which the attribute is connected and another node in the tree structure. [rgc9]   
 
     
     
         17 . A computer readable data structure representative of a surface syntactic input, for use as an input to an application, comprising: 
 an unordered, hierarchical arrangement of nodes including non-terminal nodes representative of multiple word constituents of the syntactic input, the nodes being connected by branches labeled to indicate a semantic role of one node connected by the branch relative to another node connected by the branch.    
     
     
         18 . The computer readable data structure of  claim 17  wherein the nodes are annotated with features indicative of linguistic characteristics of the node.  
     
     
         19 . The computer readable data structure of  claim 17  wherein the nodes include terminal nodes that are lemmas of words in the syntactic input.  
     
     
         20 . The computer readable data structure of  claim 18  wherein the features are indicative of function words in the syntactic input.  
     
     
         21 . The computer readable data structure of  claim 17  wherein the arrangement includes attributes indicative of non-local dependencies between a node to which an attribute is connected and another node to which the attribute is not connected.  
     
     
         22 . The computer readable data structure of  claim 17  wherein the arrangement of nodes is processable into the input to the application.  
     
     
         23 . The computer readable data structure of  claim 22  wherein the application generates a human understandable expression based on the processed arrangement of nodes.